It is desireable, and has become common practice, during the trailer transporting of a boat and attached outboard motor over roads and highways, to tilt the motor on its mounting bracket into a position which elevates the motor as far from the road surface as possible in order to prevent impact of the motor against the road surface. Most modern outboard motors are equipped with tilt mechanisms, such as hydraulic piston-cylinder assemblies, and those tilt mechanisms are sometimes utilized to support the motor in an elevated tilt position during trailering. However, especially in view of the increasing size and weight of outboard motors, it is desireable to support the outboard motor independently of its tilt mechanism in order to avoid the imposition of forces which the tilt mechanism is not designed to accommodate. In response to the need for an effective means of supporting an outboard motor in an elevated tilt position a substantial number of different support device designs have been devised.
One type of support device which has been used is a shaft which is disposed between the motor housing and the transom of the boat upon which the motor is attached. Such devices typically utilize a V-shaped notch or cradle to engage the motor housing, and are attached to the boat transom with various types of brackets. This approach is exemplified by U.S. Pat. No. 2,977,084 to Brown, et. al., U.S. Pat. No. 4,650,427 to Huchinson, and, in a variation designed for use with inboard-outboard motors, U.S. Pat. No. 4,501,561 to Speelman. This approach affords a partial solution to the problem, but suffers from two distinct disadvantages. First, support of the motor by its housing, which is not designed to bear the weight of the motor, often causes structural damage to the motor housing, and usually results in marring the finish of the motor housing. Second, this approach imposes significant strains on the boat transom due to bouncing of the motor as the transport trailer passes over bumps and dips in the road surface, and tends to structurally damage the transom by imposing stresses the transom is not designed to accommodate.
Another approach is to dispose a similar device between the motor housing and the trailer upon which the boat and motor are transported. This approach is exemplified by U.S. Pat. No. 2,901,267 to Holsclaw, U.S. Pat. No. 3,941,344 to Paterson, U.S. Pat. No. 3,952,986 to Wells, and U.S. Pat. No. 4,125,236 to Landwerlen. Devices of this type do provide an improvement over the transom-mounted designs in that they eliminate the problem of stress and damage to the boat transom, but they do not address the significant problem of structural and finish damage to the motor housing.
Thus there remains a need for an outboard motor support device which provides a stable support for the motor in an elevated position without imposing excessive and damaging stress on either the motor housing or the boat transom.